


Marian Loved

by honeybatts



Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dragon Age Quest: Here Lies the Abyss, Fluff, Found Family, Friends to Lovers, M/M, One Shot, Post-Here Lies the Abyss, hawke isnt dead :')
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-06-27 05:35:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15679056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeybatts/pseuds/honeybatts
Summary: marian hawke finds himself alarmingly alive after his encounter with the fade's nightmare demon.





	Marian Loved

* * *

 

        Marian loved too hard.

        He loved Anders, even after he blew up the Chantry, and that’s why he didn’t kill him–though maybe that’s also because Marian never felt right killing anyone, even those that deserved it. He loved him because his passion bubbled up from deep within him, and it was often something that made Marian afraid because it would possess him, sometimes, and he would not be himself–but when Anders returned, it was always quiet, and fearful, and Marian–especially when he was young–knew that feeling too well to ever tell him. He loved Merrill, because she felt as peculiar and out of place as he did, and because she always fretted about the state of her little alienage house even after he told her not to, that his house–his uncles, and then his father’s, his real one–was much worse. Even when she brought a haunted mirror into her house and asked him to help her fix it, even after the night that Pol died because he ran from her, they spoke to each other in soft tones, sweet ones, like they had been friends forever.

       He loved Fenris, because he was fierce and felt everything down into his core, because feelings vibrated out of him in shaking hands and sharp eyes, because even though he was a mage, Fenris still called him friend and laughed at at least some of his jokes, though some drunkenly. He loved Fenris because sometimes he would see him melt a little on the inside, when he thought no one was looking, into something that felt like it didn’t have to be so strong anymore, and Marian appreciated Fenris letting him see that, the rare times that he did. He loved Aveline because she reminded him of his late mom–or was that weird?–red headed and stubborn, and mighty, a force of nature to be dealt with, who loved too much, just as he did, though she liked to hide it in silly ways, like in steel marigolds and shields in their names, though, not really. When she remarried, Marian cried and thanked Donnic for his love, and hugged the both of them, and always kept Aveline in the kindest thoughts, even when her hennishness felt too smothering.

       He loved Isabela because she was something out of a heroes story, where she was the hero and she won every time, even when she lost. She told him raunchy stories when he was much too young–which Aveline hated, he’s sure–and he told her about the one embarrassing time he broke his leg, and she bought him his first drink through giggles and tears and told him he deserved it. She had once held her life in her own hands, when she left, but she returned to place it, with all the weight of the world, into Marian’s. He was younger, then, foolish and scared for all the right reasons, but she trusted him. He liked to think his story played some part in that. He loved Sebastian because he reminded him of his brothers, he guessed, who were pious and tried too hard, and were never, entirely, comfy. Sebastian felt out of place, and didn’t even have his own lodgings in Kirkwall, and Marian would visit him in the Chantry and feel out of place with him. Even when he swore his march on Kirkwall for Anders’ crime, he couldn’t help but to feel a pang in his heart as he left, bow clutched tightly in hand, without really saying goodbye.

       He loved his brother, though many times he hated to say it, because they were together. They ran together from their little rented room in the Lothering tavern with their mother after they–he, really, it was Marian–got in a big fight with their father, all the way to Kirkwall, where his brother was annoyed and angry nearly every day because the Free Marches felt too warm compared to Ferelden and nothing was familiar, except the constant threat of Templars. Marian loved his brother because he was the one he lost first, when he didn’t take him into the Deep Roads with himself, Varric, Aveline, and Merrill, and in about a month and a half’s time, when he had finally reached home after three weeks delay–thank you, Bartrand–he found his brother with the Templar emblem emblazoned on his chest and their mother sobbing, falling to her knees. It was a betrayal, and Marian hated him for years–he was only twenty, then, childish and cruel–and refused to write back, but after the Chantry had gone to pieces and Orsino too, his brother appeared like a great white knight and stood against Meredith, sword drawn, ready to die for him, like he’d been doing all the six-something years where he averted the Templars gaze from the idiot boy who carried a stave out in public.

       He loved his mother, because she loved his father. Marian’s father was the seventh son, and Marian’s mother had had six sons, the seventh being a little bundle of messy black hair amongst a sea of red and blond. She had kept him secret, pretended that he was a child of her husband, but when he was four and a good portion of his brother’s hair was on fire, when no magic ran in either of their very respectable families, her secret union with a charming and charismatic apostate with the surname Amell was found out. She pleaded to keep him out of the Circles, until one evening when she was away, Templars took him in the night and his stepfather said that he must’ve run away, lot of trouble he’s caused us. But when Uldread started acting strange and the mages around him too, the son Amell ran back home with a still aching leg, after first diving off the fifth floor balcony into the icy waters of Lake Calenhad below, when the Templars attentions were elsewhere. When the Blight started in full and Ostagar fell–the Grey Wardens with it–his mother took him to Lothering and told him that they’d be together, no matter what happened, and that his stepfather–“the blighted bastard that he is!”–won’t keep them apart again. When she was kidnapped, murdered, pieced together and resurrected, he had failed her, and sobbed off and on for weeks, because her last words to him were that she was proud of him, and it hurt him more than the waters, or the endless running, or the aching legs.

       And, finally, he loved Varric because of his stories and the way he lit up the room with a smile and a laugh. When he was younger, he didn’t know what love was–anything in the Circle was boys play, because he never let anyone touch him back–but he was smart enough to think that if love had a physical form, it would be a dwarf. Because Marian was young and all limbs and crooked smiles, Varric had taken a shine to him and called him Chuckles, because of the way that Marian would burst into peels of desperate laughter whenever things escalated, which things often did in Kirkwall; and because he was young, Marian hated it, but he loved that it was special to him, Chuckles, Varric’s name just for him, like Daisy or Blondie or Rivaini. Varric watched Marian’s back when he was sloppy and allowed someone with something particularly sharp get too close, but there were times when he couldn’t, and the way he fretted over this long-legged child and walked him home and apologized to his mother when Marian was less Marian and more bandages made him feel familiar, comfortable. When Marian was older–taller and stronger, arms tighter from whipping staves around and slamming them to the ground, legs still long but meatier now (probably from running from dragons, the damned things), his chest filled out and almost barreled, but Maker be damned, not a hair on his chin or on his sharp jawline–and still had no luck in love, Varric kept the days light. When Anders grew darker with each passing day, the tensions between Kirkwall’s Templar Order and it’s frightened Circle growing ever closer to it’s breaking point, all Marian had to do was visit the Hanged Man, give a little hello to Isabela and Merrill, if she was there, and find Varric, a little pocket of comfort. Marian melted away and he felt raw and warm, even in the rare times when he wasn’t talking. When things did break, though, which things often did in Kirkwall–his brother leaving, his mother dying, the Chantry gone and the city’s streets in chaos–Marian found his heart pounding, aching, breathless and shaking, because there was no time for the comfort he craved, not in his final moments in Kirkwall.

       When Meredith fell, Marian left, Chuckles gone, no more. He told nary a soul, save for Arthenril, if only to tell her he’d be unable to accept her work anymore, and she’d better find someone else, Varric had tracked him down to a small hovel in Antiva City and sent him a three-part angry letter about leaving nearly four months after he’d left. Marian learnt to keep in touch, then–he traveled often, and Varric’s letters always found him, as though guided by Bianca herself. It was when he was older that he found himself writing silly things, fragile things, first with “remember when"s, then escalating–as things often did for Marian–to “I wish you were here"s. Then, hypothetical, "if you were here"s, to the downright dangerous, "I wish I could see you, I want to see you again"s. Marian didn’t realize Varric’s increasingly tender, though hesitant, letters, his writing smaller, concentrated, contemplative. Marian was careless, as he was always, big and clumsy writing where he wrote whatever came to mind in the years between the fall of Meredith and the rise of the Inquisition. Then, one letter came in, after a year, a whole year into the newest order–and Varric wanted to see him again. And, this time, he gave a location, and arranged transportation, because maybe it wasn’t the best idea to make a big fuss over one of the Champions of Kirkwall, but here he was, making a big fuss over Marian. When they saw each other again, Marian had grown a beard, which Varric promptly complained about as soon as Marian embraced him and rubbed his cheek against the dwarfs, and Marian laughed because he was lit up from the inside out with comfort.

       When Marian was lost to the Fade, he thought long and hard about the things he missed. He missed his brother, sure, and the big family that he had made with a very nice lady named Estelle that he had met in Kirkwall, and all his other brothers too, though he wondered what they were up to now. He missed his mother and all her fierce sweetness, and the way she described his father with all the romanticism in the world, and he always wondered if it was just the leftover embers of passion, or if she really loved his stepfather after all. He missed small comforts–a bed, for one, because sleeping, or resting in general, in the Fade was something that seemed damn near impossible, and food as well, though he found his hunger diminishing the longer he lingered, so he tried to keep as active as he could, killing demons, visiting dreams and vanquishing nightmares, things of that ilk. Maybe it was because he was a mage, but he lasted much longer than he thought he would, until he began getting nervous, anxious, panicked because he was a mage in the Fade and how would he begin to know if he were dying, or already dead? And panic more, because there were things he still had to say, things he still had to write, and he began looking for rifts that he could peek out of, push through, no matter where they may be in Thedas. He thought about the things he missed again, the people he missed, and found himself cowardly and scared. It had taken him perhaps months in the Fade to add another to the list, a name somewhere near the top, sandwiched between his late mother and his brothers, and their undoubtedly large families.

       Marian loved Varric because he lit him up, reduced him to a man who wanted to hold tightly and never let go, a man who wanted to be touched and held. He loved Varric because he called him Chuckles until Chuckles was transformed into Casanova, and because Varric wrote Marian into his books with a certain sort of sweetness that made his heart feel drunk even at twenty. He loved Varric because Varric always carried Home with him. He loved Varric because Varric didn’t just settle, he was forever busy with nervous hands and a need to tell tall tales, sometimes even about Marian, and he loved Varric because Varric made Marian push out from the Fade and land into a plain full of plush, green grass in the middle of some great, probably elfin forest, and he loved Varric because, Maker be damned, he ought to at least tell him himself, before he spent any more time thinking he was dead.

**Author's Note:**

> an old dragon age short frm the summer of 2015! honestly, this is still one of my favorite things that i wrote during my Big Dragon Age Phase, and i hope you enjoyed it!!


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